


The Archer's Bows Have Broken

by frumpandcardigans



Category: The Walking Dead (TV), bethyl - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Gen, Introspection, Possibly Unrequited Love, Terminus (The Walking Dead), The Walking Dead Season 4, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, canon compliant up to season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 09:44:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3645675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frumpandcardigans/pseuds/frumpandcardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's Daryl got left to do but ruminate? He's trapped inside a shipping container, after all.</p><p>Set after the Season Four finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Archer's Bows Have Broken

  
_“Who do you carry that torch for, my young man?  
Do you believe in anything?”_  
\- Brand New

The thing about facts was you didn't have to believe in them the way you believed in other things. Facts were easy. You believed in facts the way you believed in the sky: as definitive, as infinite, as something you could never experience as anything other than what it was. The sky would always be the sky. Nothing more, nothing less. You didn’t have to change it or decode it to understand it better. In fact, it was enough for you that the sky even existed at all.

The only thing Daryl Dixon believed in was Beth Greene.

At one time, he believed in death. He believed in death’s permanence and its ambiguity. In Daryl’s mind, death had been something of a solace. Something of an escape from his good-for-nothin daddy and his overbearing brother. Daryl had hoped by the time death rolled round his neighborhood, ready to kick down his door, he’d have finally earned a little peace and quiet. Without his father’s voice in his head shouting at him for being weak. Without Merle hawing in his ear about drugs and fine women. There were times he couldn’t wait for his day to rest in the sweet silence of the earth to become fodder for grass and trees and insects, giving back to Mother Nature every morsel of life Daryl‘d ever consumed. That was how much Daryl believed in death.

But not anymore. Death was none of the things Daryl once believed of it. Before the Turn, death had been uncomplicated and free from responsibility. You didn’t have to worry that once you died you’d reawaken and feast upon your family. Now, you either died with the knowledge that you were going to infect others, or you died with a gun to your temple. Fact was, even true death came with a smashed skull and a guilty conscience. Where once Daryl found solace, he discovered the smell of rotting flesh and the gnawing ache of perpetual hunger. He discovered despair. He discovered years upon years of wandering souls.

Even burial, which had been so much of a fact before the turn, had become a luxury. Daryl couldn't bring himself to believe in that. No matter how long he lived. No matter how many people he killed. Daryl refused to believe in a world that left the dead to rot face-down in a pile of vomit on the blood-smattered cement. He refused to believe in a death that forced the hand of another pull the trigger. And a death that forced one’s own hand to pull the trigger? Was that even really death? Daryl scoffed at the thought.

Daryl may have appeared to be a ruthless hunter, may have appeared to fit in with Joe's Merry Band of Bandits as they wandered and pillaged, but he wasn't heartless. Hell, he‘d done a number of ugly things throughout his life in the name of self-preservation. He’d do whatever was necessary to protect himself and his family. That didn’t mean that losing people, even the enemy, didn’t wrack his nerves. He felt each loss personally, every face a chink dug deep into the surface of his stoic façade. Soon enough, the chinks would add up, spider-webbing out of control until his surface split open and his entire sense of self shattered.

And so, as he lay against the cold metal wall of a shipping crate, ready to be fattened up and devoured by the good ole folks of Terminus like some sick fairy tale, what else was there for him to believe in? 

His crossbow? The first thing in life Daryl ever believed in was his crossbow. It was the one thing that didn't drag him down, drub him up, or spit him out. It had become a constant, something reliable. Almost a sort of silent friend. Unlike most people he knew, it would never walk out on him, turn its back on him, or raise a hand to him. He believed in its steadiness and its accuracy. He believed in its loyalty and its comfort. He believed in it with the whole of his body, a belief so complete that it became an extension of him, arm and eye.

Daryl didn't even have that tiny crutch now they'd let their guard down. He scoffed. “Sanctuary for all”? He should have known. They’d been enticed by a trail of sweets and the illusory scents of a fucking gingerbread house. Now they'd walked straight into the clutches of a haggard old bitch with an acquired taste and plenty of armed, hungry minions. All of ’em standing around licking their chops and salivating like a pack of rabid wolves.

Sure, he had his family: Rick, Carl, Michonne, Glenn and Maggie, even the newcomers' ragtag troupe. Sure, they were there. They were sentient. They were fierce and capable. Maybe Rick would do everything in his power to get them out of this alive. Maybe Daryl would put his arrow straight through the eye of that skinny little fucker, Gareth. Maybe they'd all fight, blood and bone and teeth. But their health was waning, chipping away the longer they stayed holed up in this damned, rusting shipping container. They were trapped just the same as he was. They breathed the same stale air. They were blinded by the same bleak permanence and overcome by the same darkness. Daryl didn't have to believe in those things because they, like turning, were facts.

All Daryl had left to believe in was Beth.

She was still out there fighting. He had to believe she was fighting. To survive. To escape. Just 'cause she wasn't anything like Michonne or Maggie or Carol (and how his heart still grimaced to think of his dear friend) didn't mean Beth wasn't a survivor. Hell, at sixteen she'd proven herself resilient, coming back from her breakdown stronger than ever and contributing to their group by keeping a cool head when others lost it and taking care of the children. She'd been willing to sacrifice herself for those damned kids back at the prison after the Governor’s attack. What other sort of proof, what other test of strength in her character, was needed? Daryl had been dead wrong for mocking her in that moon-shiner’s shack. Or for judging her as weak back at Hershel’s farmhouse. She didn't have to wield guns or slit a man from guts to gullet to make it out there. Survival didn't come with an instruction manual and you didn't get a gold star for tryin'. There were plenty of ways to make it through the day; being eternally optimistic after the world destroyed everything you loved and facing the day with a smile on your face just happened to be Beth’s. All she had to do was be smart, be swift, and lay low. Daryl had to believe Beth would do that, wouldn't put herself in harm's way unless she thought it absolutely necessary, because she was it for him.

And it was stupid, goin' and falling in love with the sweetest girl at the end of the world. Daryl knew that, but he never claimed to be a smart man. Hell, he'd be the first to admit a girl like Beth deserved a helluva lot more than a guy like him. But when Daryl closed his eyes at night, it wasn't the back of his eyelids he prayed to. It wasn't the ever-expanding darkness he wished upon. It wasn't even the memories of a time before the stench of death he dreamed of.

Instead, wild azure irises dared him. Wide blue orbs challenged him. Dulcet cerulean vastness threatened him with the havoc of heaven and hell all at one time. All his prayers, wishes, and dreams coalesced at one point...and that was in the fiery depths of Beth's eyes.

God, Beth’s eyes. Beth’s eyes were all he saw when he closed his own.

Beth's eyes could decipher facts in a way that had you questionin' why you ever believed they were facts in the first place. Beth's eyes had a way of taking facts and turning them into fictions. Beth's eyes could decode the sky.

They'd sure as shit decoded him.

It wasn't just that Daryl could see every possibility in Beth's eyes, though. It was that every time he was near her, he felt the future unfold. Beth made Daryl want to keep house, to eat jelly and drink cola by candlelight. To listen to her sing until the candles melted to stubs. They’d spent so much time wanting things out of necessity that it felt good to want something because it seemed tangible. Beth had Daryl thinkin’ of futures he never would’ve considered in this shithole they called reality. Especially not with his history.

Above all, Beth made him believe in the sky again. 

Not as a fact, but as a possibility.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this piece last year after the season 4 finale. Basically, I just craved a cyclic introspective piece about Daryl's feelings for Beth. I'm still crushed over Beth's death (and Tyreese's AND Noah's), so I decided to share. I hope SOMEONE enjoyed! Before this, I hadn't written in almost three years and had zero intention of posting for public consumption, so please be gentle with me. Constructive criticism is welcome, as this has NOT been beta'd and I know there is tons of room for improvement! :)
> 
> Title and epigraph from Brand New's "The Archer's Bows Have Broken."


End file.
